Simon's Vendetta
by wbyeets
Summary: Simon Belmont, a legendary slayer of bad guys, returns to vandalize Dracula's private property once again.


It had been a long time since Simon Belmont had considered himself to be a happy man. Things had been going wrong at an exponential rate since his wife ( _Ex-wife_ , he reminded himself grimly as he poured another shot of Wild Turkey) Tammy Belmont had taken their horse and buggy and galloped off into the night while Simon had been at work. The awful bitch. She'd got more than his horse—she'd got Simon's pride as well.

What was left? Simon looked dizzily about his little kitchen and, after a time, stood and went to the window over the sink. Dracula's castle struck a silhouette against the moon, stabbing up from the hills beyond Simon's meager lot like a collection of dragons' teeth. He wondered what was going on up there.

"Tammy," Simon said to the kitchen. It came out in a breath that was nearly a sob.

 _Don't you go up there,_ Tammy's voice said from the bottom of his mind, from the black rooms of memory he'd tried and failed to blockade with a thousand bottles. _You leave them people alone, Simon. They ain't never done no turn of mischief to us._

Tammy had never liked Simon's trips to Dracula's castle. In the end, he believed, they had probably been what had driven her away. But he had never been able to hold himself back—not then and not now. There were just so many things up there, when he was deep in his drink, to take his anger out on. The castle became Simon's wild amusement park, the focusing point for his every hedonistic desire. And he knew that on this night he would be going again.

 _You's a fightin' man,_ Tammy's voice scolded. _You always was, Simon._

"A fightin' man I am," Simon agreed, smoothing back his mullet and going to find his his circlet and war skirt.

Half an hour later, Simon Belmont arrived at the gate of Dracula's castle. His eyes were bloodshot and furious. He took the bars of the gate in both hands and gave it a hearty shake. It didn't open. He stumbled backward a step and unlimbered his whip.

"Open this fucking gate," Simon bellowed, lashing the bars crosswise. Sparks flew. A crow called out in the night. After a while a figure appeared, coming down the drive to meet him.

It was a skeleton.

Simon Belmont _hated_ skeletons.

"Lemme in," Simon shouted.

The skeleton shook its head slowly back and forth. "Can't do that, Mister Belmont. Can't let you in. You know you not allowed in here no more. Not after what you did last time."

"You open this goddamn gate," Simon said.

"Can't let you in, Mister Belmont."

"Open it!" Simon screamed. "Open it, open it, you skeleton fuck!"

"This don't need to be no big production, Mister Belmont. You turn around and go on home. Otherwise I'm afraid I'm have'a give the constable a call. Now you don't want that."

Simon stepped back from the gate and glared at the shambling skeleton. He was blisteringly angry now. "I'm gonna get in," he promised the skeleton. "And when I do I'm gonna whip you in the dick."

"Ain't got no dick, Mister Belmont."

Simon lowered his head and charged at the gate. He clanged against it and screamed like a buzzard. The bars bowed inward the slightest bit.

"Mister Belmont, you go on home!" the skeleton cried.

"I'm climbing over it," Simon announced. "I can climb this gate."

The skeleton clattered off into the darkness while Simon began to scale the gate. It was slow going because Simon was so drunk, but he eventually got ahold of the arrowhead points and pulled himself up and over. With a dramatic roar of victory, he fell off the gate and into the courtyard of Dracula's castle.

"Come back here, you shit head," he breathed, lumbering first to his knees and then to his feet. The whip had gotten tangled around the points atop the gate when he climbed over, so he had to spend a minute pulling it down. He wished it wasn't a chain whip. A standard cord whip would have come loose much easier, but the steel links caught and jagged weirdly against one another and made removing the whip from the gate a job and a half. When at last Simon Belmont was rearmed, he staggered toward the barn he'd thought the skeleton had retreated into. The barn was where Dracula kept his haunted horse heads.

"You get out of here, Simon Belmont!" the skeleton shouted as Simon burst through the double doors. "You get your dirty ass on out! This is _private_ _prop_ erty!"

Simon coiled up his whip and got into a whipping stance. He shook his head to clear it and then, in a surprising display of marksmanship, struck a candle neatly down from the wall. The skeleton screamed in fear.

"You ruinin' all the candles!" the skeleton said.

"Hold still, you dickless bastard." Simon Belmont recoiled his whip and then slung it at the skeleton, striking it smartly on the hip. The skeleton screeched and fell backward onto a pile of hay. Like hornets from a jostled nest, haunted horse heads began to rear up off the dusty floor of the barn.

"Oh shit," Simon said huskily. Suddenly he felt way too drunk to fend off flying horse heads. He staggered away, backed out the double doors, slammed them shut, and then fumbled a nearby stick through the doorhandles. He could hear the angry horse heads neighing and bouncing around inside the barn with the whipped skeleton.

"Skeleton mother fucker," Simon Belmont said, bracing himself against the door with both hands while he tried to regain his balance. "I hate this place. I hate all of this."

All at once Simon realized he was hungry. The liquor had switched gears on him and was now issuing a command to search out and destroy a pork chop post haste. His stomach made a loud noise. He rolled himself around one hundred and eighty degrees and went back down the road that led to the gate and the graveyard. It was very dark, and Simon twice lost his footing and went face-first into the mud. By the time he reached the graveyard, he looked pretty well done in.

"Give it up," he said aloud to the darkness, and whipped an elaborately carved marble headstone in the shape of a winged angel. A large chip of marble busted off the angel's shoulder. Simon moved in close and looked.

"Nothing," he groaned. "No pork chop."

He went from grave to grave, whipping and whipping, smashing things left and right. He overturned a garbage can Dracula had set out for mourners to use so that the graveyard would not become polluted with their debris, and there was no pork chop in there, either. Simon cried out harshly and fell to his knees. He was starving to death.

 _You leave them people alone, Simon!_ Tammy Belmont screamed at Simon from someplace deep in his head. _It ain't right for you to go and stir up trouble every night!_

"Shuddup, you _slut_ ," Simon gurgled, lying down in the mud. "It's the family duty. I gotta whip Dracula and the skeletons. It's gotta be done."

He felt himself sliding downward into the abyss. With one last burst of strength, he latched his fingers onto a tombstone and pulled himself up. Stars swooped through his field of vision. He was blind and starving and lonely.

"Taaammyyyyy," he bellowed, and then slid back down into the mud.

Twenty minutes later, Dracula and two skeletons managed to lift and carry Simon all the way back to the gate. "I've had it with this asshole," Dracula said.

"He sure do get heavy when he drinks," one of the skeletons grunted. Its back crackled as it shifted its grip on Simon's legs. "You think we ought to call the constable again?"

"We'd ought to call Alcoholics Anonymous," Dracula said.

"He wouldn't go to any of the meetings past the first one," the skeleton said.

They unlocked the gate and rolled Simon out onto the cobblestone road.

"I'm going to take that whip away from him," Dracula said after a moment. He took the whip and carried it a short distance away before coiling it loosely and throwing it as hard as he could into the trees. It drooped over a branch like a dead snake.

"He just gonna find it again," one of the skeletons said regretfully. "Or a different one."

"Hopefully he just dies," Dracula said, shaking his head. "I know that's an awful thing to say, but I've really had it with this fucking guy. I mean it. I'm tired of dealing with this shit every single night."

Dracula and the two skeletons locked the gate against Simon's slumbering body and started to walk back toward the castle.


End file.
